Taylor: Stop moralizing bailouts, assistance to poor — not just in COVID-19 relief but in all assistance programs

Taylor: Stop moralizing bailouts, assistance to poor —...

1of3A man crosses Houston Street in downtown San Antonio on March 26, 2020. Columnist Michael Taylor writes that the vast majority of the estimated 22 million people who have filed for unemployment in the past month want to work.Photo: Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

2of3A scooter rider drives past the Majestic Theatre, shut down during in compliance with the stay-at-home ordinance. Columnist Michael Taylor writes that the current bailout has highlighted the American tendency to attach moral failure and moral conditions to financial need and poverty.Photo: Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

3of3A woman sits on the sidewalk at the 100 block of East Houston Street in downtown San Antonio. Businesses throughout the city have been shut down as part of efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus.Photo: Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

One flaw in our bailout of small businesses in a massive pandemic-induced recession is that we love to attach moral conditions to financial assistance. We moralize, just as we moralize in “normal” times.

Businesses that derive income from marijuana, even where it is legal, can’t apply for Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, loans.

Any business that draws at least a third of its income from gambling is also ineligible for the PPP program.

In addition, any business with an owner with at least a 20 percent stake who is on probation, paroled or incarcerated, or was convicted of a felony in the past five years may not receive PPP funds. This, despite the fact that arguably entrepreneurship is the best route for felons to rebuild their lives.

If their debt has been paid to society, why punish them further during a pandemic? “Well, you should have thought about what would happen to your small business when a global pandemic hits before committing that crime!” is an absurd thought process.

With Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL — another leg of the federal bailout of small businesses — we see this morality play out on the first page of the application. The program is not available to people who derive income from the adult-entertainment industry or sex-related businesses, even if they are perfectly legal activities.

These are the most obvious examples of conditioning bailout funds on moral behavior.

There’s a more subtle moral underpinning to typical financial assistance, one that dominates our policymaking even during normal times. It comes with programs such as welfare, unemployment and food stamps.

The reason for those moral conditions is that we in the United States usually begin with the premise that personal poverty is the result of personal moral failure.

This is in stark contrast to other ways of considering the origins of poverty. We could choose to see poverty as an accident of birth. Certainly it seems to be that for the 25 percent of children who live in poverty in Bexar County, for example.

We could choose to see poverty as a result of institutional weakness, such as poor schooling or a criminal justice system focused on incarcerating drug addicts rather than rehabilitating them.

We could choose to see poverty as a result of force majeure, a kind of unavoidable accident. This has rarely been our view. But a vast majority of the estimated 22 million people who have filed for unemployment in the past month want to work. Their employers have been forced to shut down by government authorities fighting the pandemic.

That’s why this month it’s suddenly much easier to see that poverty could come, for many, from an avoidable turn of bad luck.

(Note: I am not a lawyer, I understand force majeure is a legal term, and please do not use this preceding paragraph as legal advice for your upcoming business contract disputes.)

But instead of birth, institutional weakness or bad luck, we tend to see moral failure as the root of financial failure. And when you blame poverty on the immorality of its victims, a natural set of moralizing policies ensues.

In normal times, efforts to alleviate poverty are accompanied by moral conditions. A mother with a child must spend the money on a certain list of foods, not other items. Unemployment assistance must be accompanied by proof of attempts to find work. We have been shouting at each other for a couple of decades now about the moral meaning of expanding federal health care coverage for uninsured people.

If you talk about inequality in America in mixed political company, you may hear about the moral failings of unwed mothers, feckless absentee fathers and people who want lots of things for free.

It seems many people want to ensure that a recipient of public assistance has a spotless record, a two-parent family and a no-jeans policy on Sundays. But this kind of moralizing requires a monstrous government bureaucracy to ensure compliance. A more libertarian approach, one that should appeal to an American preference for smaller government, would eliminate these moralistic conditions.

What if we simply treated the problem of poverty with cash, not tie it to any particular moral outcome? What if the larger sin is that poverty and child hunger still exist in our country? Would cash cure that larger societal sin? I’d say yes.

Here’s my argument for dropping the morality crap. Were I a felon, a gambling-parlor owner or a sex worker on the Titanic, would I need to pass a morality test before qualifying for a spot on a lifeboat? Can’t you just give me a chance at saving myself and hold the morality for later, when we reach dry land?

Or maybe just save the morality for — I don’t know — maybe never? Would never be a good time to apply your moral rules to my survival?

We’re now in a collective crisis, one for which morality tests seem particularly inappropriate. Does not a sinner deserve to eat? Or at least does not a child of a sinner deserve to eat?

This is as direct as I can say it: Can we stop moralizing around poverty-reduction programs and just give money, please? So what if a few people snort that money up their nose? That is their loss. The higher morality is to overlook a few unfortunate choices and do what’s best for the least fortunate of our society. The majority of people in our country who desperately need assistance are just poor. By birth, bad luck or force majeure.

Who cares how they got that way?

Am I not my brother’s keeper?

Michael Taylor is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and author of “The Financial Rules for New College Graduates.”